Legend has it that Shushtari’s master gave him a tambourine and made him sing in the market for his money (probably as a way of teaching the young nobleman humility). He kept repeating the first line of this song over and over again, unable to come up with anything else, until inspiration struck, and the rest of the verses came pouring out. This, his first composition, has been sung ever since…

حجَبْتَني عني بِيَّا فَما أظْهَر

وغِبْتُ عن عيْني كأنِّي لم أظْهر

فَصِرتُ أطلُبني لَعلَّ بِي أظْفَر

عِشْقُ المليحْ يا صاحْ فَنِّي وشُرْبي مِنْ دَنِّي

CHORUS
I live in love and for me your kisses
are like the source of my thought

Take me with you because I cannot find myself outside of your love

At dawn, I feels she calls me
like a whirlwind, she wakes up my soul!
I want you to feel as I feel,
to call me during the night in your dreams
to be like the tree which gives you shelter
when you need the shade (x2)

Take me with you because I cannot find myself outside of your love
Chorus x 2

God brought you with Him.
I ask you when
I will go to heaven (x2)
so I may kiss your lips

The poems of the Andalusian Sufi, Abu’l-Hasan Shushtari (d. 1269) parallel and perhaps indirectly influenced some of my favorite Flamenco lyrics. Compare this pair of songs:

Your love for me is not a fantasy

However much they forbid that I love you,
like a jib to the water I will resist.
Only your tender love I would have for company
I wanted to give you more and more I’d give you,

Because I know that without you I won’t live,
because wherever you are I will follow,
that’s why I love you and dream of you.

Your love for me is not fantasy,
the memory hurts me every day,
I am of your love that abandons me,
and loved me and wanted me.

You and I on the blanket,
you and I under the moon,
your dark eyes were glistening
reflecting the tenderness

A love looks strong,
my heart,
if my eyes didn’t look at you
every day

You were something that goes and never comes
and clear was your farewell and clear was my sorrow.
Without your love, I only love the earth
without your love, two minutes is one day,
that’s why I love you and you take my life.

I would like to hear the voice of the wind
that brings the sighs that you give,
your sorrows are like mine,
like the waves of the ocean

Your love for me is not fantasy,
the memory hurts me every day,
I am of your love that abandons me,
and loved me and wanted me

وإِذا البكاءُ بغير دمْعٍ دأبُهُ والصَّبُ يجْري دمْعُه بعُيُونهْ

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

-William Shakespeare

Translation:

O you present in my heart

Thinking of you, I am glad

If she doesn’t visit my eye

then my heart replaces it

I have not vanished, but my body

is wasting away from weakness

The blamer did not find me

and no watchman sees me

If fate had known me

the people would have come to me

Nothing remains except love

ask it, and it will answer for me

-Abu’l Hasan Shushtari

Original:

يَا حاضِراً في فُؤادي بِالفكرِ فِيكمْ أطيبُ

إِنْ لمْ يزُرْ شخصُ عيني فالقلبُ عِندي ينُوبُ

مَا غِبتُ لَكِنَّ جِسْمي من النُّحول يذوبُ

فَلمْ يَجدْني عذولٌ وَلاَ رآنِي رَقِيبُ

وَلوْ دَرَى الدَّهْرُ عَنِّي جَاءت إِلىَّ شعُوبُ

لَمْ يَبْقَ غَيْرُ غَرامٍ فَسَلهُ عَنِّي يِجُيبُ

Translation of Lyrics:

Strumming the strings of his guitar,
Strumming the strings of his guitar,
A Sultan complained of his Queen.

The following was one of Ibn ‘Arabi’s favorite verses of poetry, oft-quoted by Sufi authors ranging from al-Ghazzali to Fakhr ad-din ‘Iraqi to Emir ‘abd al-Qadir to explain the mysterious relationship between God and the heart.

The glass was so clear, and so was the wine

they became so similar, that it became unclear

Whether there was wine and no cup

Or a cup and no wine

-Ṣaḥib ibn ‘Abbād

Original:

رقَّ الزجاجُ وَرَقَّت الخمرُ وَتشابها فَتَشاكل الأَمرُ

فَكَأَنَّما خمرٌ وَلا قَدحٌ وَكَأَنَّما قَدحٌ وَلا خمرُ

As Junayd famously said,

The colour of water is the colour of its vessel

لون الماء لون انائه

Compare with my own humble meditation on this theme:

If you see cup and wine as two, you haven’t drunk enough

In this tavern, we drink love’s molten glass, served by the cup

And when the sparkling wine is swirled and left still to breathe well

That’s just the glass-blower whispering his secret sculpting spells

Not only does this wine redden cups’ sweet cheeks and their lips

Its pouring gives them lovely shapes and their bright translucence

The heavens are but spinning glasses cast from frozen wine

How strange that they all seem to fit within this cup of mine

Inside my glass, last night, I saw your face, mingling with mine

In drunken clarity, I sipped myself in your outline

The fine lines of your lips are just the rippling of this wine

And so we drink and kiss ‘till I can’t tell what’s yours from mine

Last night, I got so drunk I sold my soul for cups of wine

I’m back to see what I can get for my body this time

My heart’s the secret flask of that most thirsty of madmen

Who drained the wine, drank the dry glass, then downed the whole tavern

Bilqis thought our way was water, but soon learned this glass held wine